Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880)

by Karen Board Moran, 3/26/2005

Courtesy of PBS website and
American Antiquarian Society

Turning from her early career as a novelist and writer of advice books like The Frugal Housewife in 1829, Lydia Maria Child took up the abolitionist cause. She said William Lloyd Garrison “got hold of the strings of my conscience and pulled me into reforms.” (James, 331)

Her abolitionist writing was launched in 1833 with An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. The history of slavery urgee readers to help end slavery.

From 1841-43, Child edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a weekly abolitionist newspaper.

Child earned money from her extensive writing which included editing Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, one of the most renowned first-person accounts of slave life.

Born February 11, 1802 at Medford, MA to Susannah and David Convers Francis.

Died October 20, 1880

Buried in Wayland, MA

Education: Attended a local “dame school” and “Miss Swan’s seminary” for a year before teaching in Gardiner, ME and Watertown, MA.

Married abolitionist lawyer David Lee Child (1800-1874) on October 19, 1828

Children: none

Preferred to be called Maria

Family lived near poverty in western Massachusetts in the mid-1830s while Mr. Child tried raising sugar beets and they struggled economically through most of their lives..